BBC RADIO 6 Henry in for Jarvis Cocker, June 26 2016, 04/04

Hello BBC Radio 6 listener and fellow music fan. No! It can’t be! But it is. This is the last of our Sundays together in Mr. Cocker’s time slot.

I am currently sitting in a tour bus in Cluses, France as our bus drivers get a break. We are on our way to Zagreb, Croatia for a show. On Tuesday, I fly back to Los Angeles.

The bus is very crowded so I have been in my bunk during the drives to have some time to myself. I have been getting some good listening over the last few days, even if it is in a small dark space. At least I have good headphones. Bulky but worth it, the Shure SH1540’s are amazing. I have been checking out releases by Ghosting, Boreal Enfer, Uton, Ashtray Navigations and Seht. In warm weather, Drone and Noise stuff works really well for me. A few nights ago in Bilbao, Spain, I was listening to Animal Boy by the Ramones and as chance would have it, in the lobby of the hotel, ran into Jean Beauvoir who produced the album.

I have a week off the road, then I am on again for a few days and then back in Los Angeles for the month of July. This will be the last time I will have with my records for the most part until early December. I will do what I can to make the most of it. I keep lists of what I listen to, and in what order I listened to it. It’s quite train spotter but I think lists are really cool. Since I have been busy on tour this year, I am off to a pretty bad start and doubt I will be able to catch up unless I really work at it. What I mean by catching up is that I try to listen to 5 releases a day. Even if it’s 5 singles, I try. On the weekends, I try to double up. I have two kinds of listening. Protein and carbohydrate listening. The former is music that is new to me, where I have to engage and pay attention. This is usually the listening I do during the week. On the weekends, I mix the protein listening with more familiar records, ones that are at this point, in my DNA. That’s the carbohydrate part. I try to acquire 1 to 3 new records every day. This is hard to keep up with and at this point, the cart is well ahead of the horse. As is the case with lot of records, if you don’t get them when they come out, they become rare, or at least very expensive. Sometimes it takes me years to listen to a record I bought with great interest. This is why I try to keep a schedule going. So far this year, April was my best month for sticking to the plan. I put it in the records I got into below. When you see a CD listed, it’s usually because I am listening in headphones somewhere.

April 2016

01. Asst. tracks for radio shows

01. The Damned - Machine Gun Etiquette CD

01. The Damned - Damned Damned Damned CD

01. Buzzcocks - Another Music In A Different Kitchen CD

02. Feels - Feels (Spilt Sugar edition) LP

02. Ausmuteants - Mates Rates / Echo Beach (black vinyl) 7”

02. Veronica Lake - Split with Crayon (Drums sleeve) 7”

02. Jonny Telefone - 4 track EP 7”

02. The Cravats - Jingo Bells / Batter House (test pressing) 7”

02. Ausmuteants - Mates Rates 7”

02. Vlubä / Uton - UV VU tape cassette

02. Laurel Aitken & the Ruts - Peel sessions 7”

02. Asst. tracks played at Starbucks at night

03. Fuzz - Live in San Francisco (white vinyl) LP

03. Art Attacks - First and Last 7”

03. Red Red Krovvy - Red Red Krovvy 7”

03. Total Control - Scene From a Marriage / Contract 7”

03. Weirdos - Destroy All Music + 2 (white label first press) 7”

03. Brando’s Island - Autism Vision / Auto Warfare 7”

03. Chicos De Nazca - Seal In The Sea / Billy’s On The Corner 7” (lathe)

03. Straight Arrows - Never Enough / Can’t Stand It 7”

03. Meatbodies - Valley Girl / Hibernation (green vinyl) 7”

03. David Bowie - Sound & Vision / A New Career (Spain promo) 7”

03. River City Tanlines - Modern Friction / He Said Yes (black vinyl) 7”

If I could, I would listen to that much music or more every month. Sometimes, if I am off the road and don’t owe a show that night, I will get up every 0430 hrs. and get the listening started in the gym and have a couple of hours to listen at the office, where I have a Paradigm speakers / McIntosh amp/preamp / Rega P3 turntable set up that, for as thrown together as it is, actually sounds really good, and get some more listening done before the phone starts ringing and I have to be somewhat responsible.

Perhaps you have skipped ahead and taken a look at all the great music we have lined up for you. This time around, I thought we would stay on the Indie side of things and not go too deep or in too many directions. You might also notice that there are a good number of Australian bands on the show this time around. I don’t know what’s happening there but it seems that every third person is in a band and they’re all really good. I was there a few months ago and found a lot of great new records. I will be back in Australia in September for almost a month and plan on hitting as many record stores as possible. Luckily, my road manager of many years, Ward, is a record store maniac and is always ready for the pre-soundcheck record store crawl.

Two of my favorite recent favorite tracks by The Fall have been sung by keyboard player and wife of Mark E Smith, Elena Poulou I thought it would be cool to play a track featuring her on vocals. She needs to do a solo record! Also, one of the best vocals ever is in our second hour with I’m A Spy by Prehensile Monkeytailed Skink. I think it’s one of those things where you either agree with me 100% or wonder what I’m on about.

I think you might have also noticed a bit of a concept happening where in our first hour, we rock solo tracks by Martin Rev and Alan Vega and then bring it all together to end our show (sniff) with a great version of Suicide’s Ghost Rider that you might not be all that familiar with.

I can only hope that had a fraction of the enjoyment listening as I did preparing these four shows for you. Thanks to you, producer Adam Dineen and Mr. Jarvis Cocker for allowing me to sit in. Have a great rest of the summer and happy listening.